Friday, February 23, 2018

Recently, Turck introduced their Backplane Ethernet Extension Protocol (BEEP). This is a new technology that has been integrated into many of Turck's multiprotocol digital block I/O modules and allows a network of devices to communicate as a single device.

BEEP allows a network of up to 33 devices (1 Master + 32 slaves) or 480 bytes of data to appear to the PLC as a single device on a single connection using a single IP address. The user will be able to create high density I/O networks and still utilize their low cost PLC due to the reduction in number of connections the PLC sees.

This technology is utilized by making the first device in the line a BEEP master, which can be done via the device webserver. The BEEP master can then scan the entire network and create a new data map that includes all of the downstream devices, with all device configuration options saved in the master.

BEEP also supports drop-in device replacement, reducing downtime and overall expenses. If the network is setup using BEEP, a technician can simply replace a slave device to keep the system online. The BEEP master will automatically recognize the device, assign it an IP address, and download parameters to it.